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Social Security may be one of your largest assets. What and when you collect will make a huge difference to your lifetime benefits.

Today’s Social Security column addresses various questions brought up by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.

Question from Dazed and Confused: Thank you for your recent articles on new Social Security strategies. We have not quite seen our case discussed and wonder if you would care to decipher our best course of action.

My wife chose to begin her Social Security benefits about a year ago at age 62 and a half due to a need for cash flow in our household. She has been receiving $682 a month. We are now in a situation where we don’t need this cash flow. She is four days older than I am, and our birth dates are in June 1952.

Can my wife now suspend her Social Security benefits, wait until I file and suspend my Social Security benefits at full retirement age and then apply for spousal benefits? My benefit amount at full retirement age is $2,716. I would subsequently file for Social Security benefits at age 70 (gaining the 8 percent increase per year from age 66 to 70) and my wife would go back to her benefits?

Answer: Dazed and Confused, the new law has changed a lot of things for you two.

Your wife can suspend her retirement benefit at full retirement age and restart it at 70 at a 32 percent higher level. And you can wait until 70 to collect your own retirement benefit. Another option is for your wife to keep taking her retirement benefit and then you could file for just your spousal benefit at full retirement age. Then at 70 you would take your own retirement benefit. (This does NOT involve your filing and suspending.)

There are many intermediate options. If your wife can still work and can earn enough money to lose all her benefits via the earnings test, that would be great, because at full retirement age, she will have those lost benefits restored in the form of a permanent bump up in her retirement benefit due to the Adjustment of the Reduction provision.